At the end of the 22nd century, rapid
progress in advanced propulsion, communications, and weapon
technologies would soon allow their introduction in production
warships. However, Starfleet was still reluctant to allow these
new starship technologies to be tested under actual operating
conditions. Because of several disastrous experiences, Starfleet
Command considered equipping front-line ships with experimental
technology to be both risky and a waste of resources. Moreover,
new technologies were often incompatible with a ship's existing
systems, necessitating a costly and time-consuming systems
overhaul to return the ship to full operational status.
Therefore, many developers of new technologies were forced to
purchase or lease decommissioned ships as testbeds. The results
gathered with these ships were valuable in that they could
determine whether a single system performed properly within
specified parameters, but they could not anticipate how the
system would perform in a next-generation starship.

Starfleet's apparent lack of interest in
emerging technologies also dissatisfied the Starfleet Corps of
Engineering. In 2190, the Corps of Engineering submitted a
proposal to Starfleet Command for the construction of a
completely new prototype ship, highly modular and incorporating
all the latest technologies in a single hull. The ship they
proposed had twice the volume of the MOSKVA class and would
have been Starfleet's largest cruiser type to date. However, the
newly established Ship Development Council of Starfleet Command
was sharply divided on whether to proceed with the proposed ship.
One faction supported the building of the new prototype ship,
whereas the other faction proposed that three units of the MOSKVA
class instead be substantially upgraded, at a fraction of the
cost of building an entirely new class. In 2192, the supporters
of the new class prevailed when the their chief opponent,
conservative Fleet Admiral Jean-Jacques Boucher, retired at age
94 and was replaced by a more progressive council member,
Commodore Barbara Rashid.

The decision to commence development of the
new class coincided with a request by the Federation Science
Council for a larger, faster ship for long-term exploration. The
Science Council argued that because Federation territory had
expanded so rapidly, many outposts and colonies in the outer
territories had not been visited by science vessels since initial
survey missions decades before. On the other hand, the Science
Council was not willing to maintain a fleet of large armed
vessels, which would naturally be under the control of Starfleet.
In 2191 the Federation Council decided to provide the Science
Council with part of the necessary funding but also chose to
place science missions at or beyond Federation boundaries under
the command of Starfleet. This decision was instrumental in the
foundation of the modern Starfleet with both military and
scientific roles.

Seventy percent of the development costs
for the new ASIA class were to be provided by Starfleet and 30%
by the Science Council. Five ships, named for the five classical
continents on Earth, were to be completed by 2195, but
construction of only the lead ship, USS ASIA (NCC-945), was
initially approved. The reason for this limited approval was that
the cost of the new ships was expected to be many times higher
than that of normal cruisers owing to the use of experimental or
custom-designed technology instead of standard components. The
construction of additional ships was nearly cancelled; however,
in 2197 construction of USS AMERICA (NCC-991) and of the three
remaining "continent" ships was approved. To complete
the prototype ship, contracts were signed with an usually large
number of constructors, many of which were actually consortia of
companies, the most important being Yoyodyne for propulsion and
power-generation systems. Final assembly of the ships was to take
place at the San Francisco Fleet Yards.

Surprisingly, the development of the new LANCASTER class was barely affected by the decision to build the
costly ASIA class. The two classes were developed almost
completely independently of each other. Although the resulting
hull shapes, owing to recent advances in subspace field dynamics,
were similar, the two designs had few other features in common.
Considering ASIA's limited, albeit modern, armament, it is not
surprising that the military branch of Starfleet was always
skeptical whether she would be a capable warship. Accordingly,
Starfleet Command looked upon ASIA as primarily a testbed while
the rather more conventional LANCASTER class would be equipped
with new features in an incremental manner. The most obvious
difference was that the lead ship, USS ASIA, cost more than twice as much as USS LANCASTER. The introduction of USS ASIA and
USS LANCASTER established separate paths of scientific and
military ship design, which were only reunited in the
CONSTITUTION class of 2245.

USS ASIA was launched from the San
Francisco Fleet Yards on April 23, 2204, in a ceremony attended
by many high-ranking members of the Federation Council. Shortly
after the ceremony a severe maladjustment developed in the
antimatter containment field of Yoyodyne's newly developed
matter/antimatter reactor which prevented the warp core from
being safely activated for a full year. After the containment
field was successfully readjusted, the new warp core performed
extremely well. In fact, similar reactor designs with dedicated
long channels for matter and antimatter are still omnipresent in
the 24th century. The next ship, USS AMERICA, followed in 2206,
and the three other "continental" ships were
commissioned in the following year.

Although ASIA-class ships carried the most
advanced technology of their time, their offensive capabilities
could be considered adequate at best. On either side of the
saucer were two type 5 phaser arrays, which could be easily
swapped out. Unlike other contemporary phaser prototypes, the
type 5 phasers already employed surface facets for beam emission
rather than rotating turrets. The absence of mechanical
components was intended to increase targeting speed and
durability, but performance was poorer than expected, and after 2
years the type 5 phasers were replaced with the standard phaser
emitter used for the LANCASTER class. The missile launch bays
were able to hold as many as four of the latest fusion-tipped
missile types. Additionally, a newly developed matter/antimatter
weapon, informally dubbed "Thor's Lightning," entered
service on USS ASIA in 2206 and on the four other ships in 2208.
This self-propelled device was essentially a conventional missile
whose fusion warhead had been replaced with an arrangement of
matter and antimatter pods. When this missile was first
introduced the risk the that antimatter containment of a single
pod would fail was still rather high, and the cumulative risk on
a ship carrying up to 20 missiles, each with 4 independent pods,
was considerable. However, subsequent advances in antimatter
containment essentially eliminated the risk of failure, and with
the introduction of new acceleration tubes the weapon became the
familiar photon torpedo.

The ASIA class was the first to be fully
equipped with subspace radio and celerotronic computer technology
that would become standard for the next 50 years. In addition,
the ASIA class introduced significant advances in computer, life
support, and power systems. Despite these innovations, a small
group of military strategists still regarded these systems as
being less important than weapons performance and speed as long
as they performed well. However, the clearly improved systems of
the ASIA class were quickly adopted for military ships as well.

When it became clear in the 2210's that the
ASIA class was much better suited for exploration missions than
were the comparatively inexpensive LANCASTER class then being
built in much larger numbers, Starfleet ordered four more
ASIA-class ships. ASIAs operated mostly on either side of the
Federation border in the Alpha Quadrant, where they were less
likely to encounter hostile ships than in the Beta Quadrant. Only
one ship of the ASIA class, USS AMERICA, ever suffered heavy
battle damage. In 2219, she was ambushed by two Klingon D-3
cruisers and subsequently retired from service.

Four starships of the ASIA class were
nearly completely reconstructed from 2262 to 2265. Only the
internal arrangement of the secondary hull and the core of the
primary hull remained substantially unchanged. A novel,
more-efficient warp drive was installed which allowed a maximum
speed of warp 5.8. The ships were fitted with state-of-the-art
phasers and photon torpedo tubes. The experiences with the
reconstruction of the ASIA class proved useful when the refit
program for the CONSTITUTION class started a few years later.
Refitting was advantageous, since it was 50% less expensive than
building a completely new starship. However, because even the
reconstructed ships could not compete with newer designs, the
last ASIA-class ship was decommissioned in 2287.

The last ship to enter service, USS THULE,
was retired in 2255 and thus retained her original configuration.
She served as an Academy training ship until 2298, but was
considered beyond restoration and was scrapped. The only
surviving ASIA-class ship, USS EUROPE (NCC-1003), is now on
display at the Starfleet Museum.